Surface water management systems[1] have been greatly shaped through political contexts, non-governmental interests, and profit motivated allocation strategies. Expanding agriculture, climate variations, encroaching urbanization, and energy generation are demanding more of river ecosystem services,[2] pushing these resources to their limits. These factors and others are stressing often dated and un-adaptive water management systems to the point of inducing both ecological and social conflicts. “In addition to behaving according to the physical laws of hydrology, [water] also flows through social power relations” (Prieto 2014, 43). Inequitable water management decisions all but guarantee substantial repercussions throughout these relations. Resulting social tensions, which emanate from peoples directly dependent and indirectly connected to basin functions,[3] are continually unfolding both within and between political boundaries and economic systems.
In many regions, energy demand has become reliant upon hydropower production. As river systems both support and rely upon intricate dependencies, anthropogenic alterations of their flows have spurred equally complex management dilemmas. Hydro projects of all scales are thus potential sources of contention between many ecological, political, economic, and social relationships. Political ecology[4] thus becomes a lens though which to analyze river development implications and their engagement with these relationships. In terms of political economic patterns, water management systems have often generated preferential policies benefitting more politically and economically influential consumers, such as private hydropower companies. Hydropower’s institutionalized presence in many nations, potentially influenced by privatized allocation, is becoming exponentially misaligned with water quantity and quality standards, jeopardizing both ecological health and social prosperity.
These dynamics, although present throughout the globe, have been pushed to the forefront in South America. In the past two decades, Chile’s privatized water management has generated social tensions which continue to accumulate and combust throughout the country’s fifteen regions. Chile’s multilayered relationship with hydropower has drawn both national and international attention since the 1990s, largely due to movements opposing specific hydro projects. Despite previous analyses of hydropower conflicts in Chile, the continuation of both hydro development and subsequent social resistances must be accompanied with vigilant consideration. This thesis aims to provide such consideration, while respecting the infinitely complex dynamics within the Chilean landscape that a nonnative cannot fully articulate nor comprehend.
Before delving into the Chile’s relationship with hydropower, I will first present a context through which to better relate Chilean dynamics with broader issues presented by river development asking: In what ways are hydropower, privatization, and social power relations connected through political ecology? Considering these relationships, how can resistance movements influence river development decisions?
[1] A water management system consists of a governing body that dictates policy and regulation regarding the allocation and development of a water resource, ideally maintaining equitable usage despite competing demand. For more information, see (Quentin 2011).
[2] For a greater understanding of what ecosystem services are and how rivers provide them, please reference (Loomis 2000).
[3] A river basin is an area of land drained by a network of watercourses flowing into one main stream. For more information on river basin dynamics, please see (Mostert 1999).
[4] Political ecology will be discussed and more specifically defined in section “Political Ecology of Neoliberal Management and Private Development.” Refer to (Minch 2011) for an in depth analysis of political ecology.